When you are a soldier you do not always realize there is anything beyond the will of your commander, the will of your king. But when you're on the field of battle, when the swords clash and the colors fly above you in all their glory, there comes a ...
When will it begin, anyway?" Sirus held his gaze for a moment, his eyes full of concern- a concern that Joss didn't understand. "Probably sooner than you're ready for." "When's that?" "Well." Sirus sighed, as if doing the math in his head."It'll take...
But if you do know what is taught by plants and weather, you are in on the gossip and can feel truly at home. The sum of a field's forces [become] what we call very loosely the 'spirit of the place.' To know the spirit of a place is to realize that y...
Mortimer had maxed three credit cards stocking the cave with canned goods and medical supplies and tools and everything a man needed to live through the end of the world. There were more than a thousand books along shelves in the driest part of the c...
I realized I was going to get through this disappointing service, and anyway, you have to be somewhere: better here, where I have heard truth spoken so often, than, say, at the DMV, or home alone, orbiting my own mind. And it's good to be out where o...
We all think when we’re young that we want excitement and highs and passion. To hell with ordinary.” I smiled and she chuckled. “But when we find ourselves in these adult bodies,” she said. “When we wise up a little, or get slapped in the f...
And I'm hoping there's some larger truth about suffering here, or at least my understanding of it - although I've come to realize that the only truths that matter to me are the ones I don't, and can't, understand. What's mysterious, ambiguous, inexpl...
For in grief nothing "stays put." One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral? But if a spiral, am I going up or down it? How often -- will it b...
I realize now that the reason we often feel so bad about change is because of all those beautiful things that happen in our lives. I mean, I can't remember ever feeling sad about many things other than a great memory. I believe in contentment and lov...
That’s when I realized it. I liked this girl. A lot. I liked her super-moist double chocolate chip cupcakes. I liked how kind and patient she was with the guests, the way her forehead crinkled when she was thinking about a problem. I liked her low,...
If you have ever seen a dragon in a pinch, you will realize that this was only poetical exaggeration applied to any hobbit, even to Old Took's great-granduncle Bullroarer, who was so huge (for a hobbit) that he could ride a horse. He charged the rank...
I think you can love a person too much. You put someone up on a pedestal, and all of a sudden, from that perspective, you notice what's wrong - a hair out of place, a run in a stocking, a broken bone. You spend all your time and energy making it righ...
Whether they are raised in indigenous or modern culture, there are two things that people crave: the full realization of their innate gifts, and to have these gifts approved, acknowledged, and confirmed. There are countless people in the West whose e...
When I thought about why I was sometimes reluctant to push myself, I realized that it was because I was afraid of failure - but in order to have more success, I needed to be willing to accept more failure.
The realization of what would happen next settled gradually over Harry in the long minutes, like softly falling snow. "I've got to go back, haven't I?" "That is up to you." "I've got a choice?" "Oh yes." Dumbledore smiled at him. "We are in King's Cr...
Luna had decorated her bedroom ceiling with five beautifully painted faces: Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and Neville. They were not moving as the portraits at Hogwarts moved, but there was a certain magic about them all the same: Harry thought they b...
I realized that you can get so used to certain luxuries that you start to think they’re necessities, but when you have to forgo them, you come to see that you don’t need them after all. There was a big difference between needing things and wantin...
As I sat down, though, I realized that you can get used to certain luxuries that you start to think they're necessities, but when you have to forgo them, you come to see that you don't need them after all. There was a big difference between needing t...
...once I realized that Australia’s top highway speed of 110 kilometers per hour was the same as going 65 in the U.S., all my hardened American enthusiasm for speed went limp until it felt like the car was hardly moving at all. Even worse, most str...
He was thirteen then, Elijah almost seven. Now, ten years later, Elijah realizes he’s older than Danny was. That all of those changes have happened to him, too. The changes that nobody has any say over. The biology—“growing” and “up” as a...
Some readers may realize that this story, first published in 1956, has been overtaken by events. In 1965, astronomers discovered that Mercury does not keep one side always to the Sun, but has a period of rotation of about fifty-four days, so that all...
